Last of the Lizardfolk

Life and Times of Dandelion the Bard

Rumor was Karackus and his army had a major battle with the newly revealed Fire Temple (after earth, air, and water temples…we weren’t surprised). The Knights took advantage to go in and see if they could take out Karackus, and were apparently successful with Knight Commander Hollister Paen striking the killing blow.

Though he lost the many of the people with him, he managed to get away and make it back to civilization.

Honestly, we are not even sure he knew what it meant to strike down Karackus – that evil lizard apparently had a divine spark in him and whoever kills him would get that spark.

But that wasn’t even the focus of our follow-up mission.

Karackus’ former army, now led by one of his generals (a Slann) was in full retreat back to Far’ohnod. We figured we could take out the general and maybe a few of Karackus’ many children. The idea being that this would end the lizardfolk threat for the foreseeable future.

Well…that part of the mission basically came true, but not much due to our actions.

We learned that the lizardfolk army was being pursued by a massive red dragon and a Balor demon.

With that information we decided that likely the Slann had already returned to the base ahead of the army and that we had a very limited time-frame to search him out.

A short foray into the depths of Far’ohnod resulted in the death of a handful of Karckus’ children and a chase to catch the Flann.

When the Flann disappeared from our detection spell we figured we’d missed him and he’d made his escape from both us and those coming in.

The other thing we found down in the depth was evidence of a Mind Flayer (oddly pale skin) and Minotaur (who has arcane symbols on his horns). While considering an attempt at these two we witnessed the Mind Flayer strike down a lizardfolk and a bright light transfer from the lizardfolk to the Mind Flayer.

After seeing the destruction these two wrought (over 100 lizardfolk deaths including some of the big guards) we decided that perhaps we needed to find a way out.

The Mind Flayer / Minotaur combo below and the Red Dragon / Balor combo coming in from above left us with few options. We decided an underwater escape using water breathing magic was our best bet and made a run for it. Unfortunately, the sharp eyes of the dragon caught us and he gave chase.

The dragon managed to scoop one of the squires out of the water and held him out for the Balor to slay. This had been the method they were using previously with lizardfolk, and I expect looking for the same “spark” that we had seen the Mind Flayer receive (not sure what this is or how many but they were searching hard for it/them).

Fortunately the water made the man slippery and he slipped out of the dragon’s grasp. Though still near both a massive dragon and a Balor demon, he had little chance of escape.

That’s until Knight Commander Hollister Paen rushed out of the water at the Balor. The combat that ensued allowed the squire to escape, but cost KC Hollister his life. KC Hollister gave almost as well as he got, but the end result was rarely in doubt.

I shall write a song honoring Knight Commander Hollister and his brave sacrifice.